‘Fuck you, this is my culture…’

My name is Amelia Andersdotter. I am a member of the European Parliament on behalf of the Swedish Piratpartiet since December 2011. I am mindful of the fact that I am one of only two women speaking in the opening session. Also, I am probably the youngest person speaking. I am only 25 years old.

The Piratpartiet wants to change the legislative framework for communication, interaction, innovation and culture. We formed around the idea that communication technologies and culture present fantastic ways of building broad global communities.

We want interactions, social, cultural and economical to be determined by and under the control of the people interacting.

When information, communication and culture can be freely accessible and used, which on the internet is basically always the case, this should as a general principle always be allowed and any exceptions or deviations to that general rule must be kept exceptional.

Unfortunately, laws at both nation state level and the international level are very ill‑equipped to achieve these goals.

For instance, direct interventions by nation states into communication and cultural flows of their citizens are ubiquitous in the world. More insidious are the restrictions on communications imposed on users by private network operators or intellectual property rights holders.

We hear words like ”freedom of speech” and ”Human Rights must be respected online”, but so far very few top political figures in the world have acknowledged, or are willing to acknowledge, that this will require regulatory intervention on some private sectors. We may also have to let go of some regulatory protections for private sector actors that we’re currently putting in place to block communications between people.

It is clear to me both at the personal and at the political level that we need to fundamentally reconsider our approach to communication. We need communication to be open and accessible. This is how we make friendships, it is how we make societies, it is how we form worlds.

The control over communities and the ability to shape them must be with the communities themselves. Infrastructure must be regulated to enable that ability and such autonomy.

The raw material for cultural identities, the culture itself, must be made more accessible than is currently the case. Copyright is not only an untimely instrument for the 21st century, it is doing active harm to culture and to communities around the world.

During one of my travels this summer I met a young man who told me with a straight face that he liked open torrent trackers because he wants to be able to seed the unpopular files[1]. I want to seed the unpopular files. I want to see the unpopular torrents and I want to live in a world where a social network, a community on its own initiative preserves the cultural wealth through the spontaneous contribution of all its members. All of the changes that are needed in our laws to ensure that these communities can exist must be undertaken and now.

To all of you here and to all of the Governments and to the public officials and lobbyists that haven’t been able to bring themselves to support these actually very extensive reforms that are necessary for these places and creative communities to exist, I would like to paraphrase George Michael from I think 1992, ”fuck you, this is my culture”[2] and if copyright or telecommunications operators are standing in the way, I think they should go.

Thank you.

[1] In the conference transcription they have put ”see the unpopular files”. [2] Cruising culture and George Michael, in the Guardian from 2006. And the real quote was ”Fuck off, this is my culture.”

Updates…

16mm short

In case you have been wondering about that 16mm short (4 min.) of mine: I had to figure out something and that’s done. The project is coming back from pause mode now…!

Blender 2.65

In other news: Blender 2.65 has been released last week, another wonderful update for this free and open-source 3d, compositing, video editing and much more package – available for all major platforms (and you can easily share e.g. your video projects/.blends between Linux, Windows and Mac – it really just works…!). Release notes. Download.